Jeremy Lin's stardom may have peaked now that he has left New York for Texas, but the 24-year-old believes that he will get "a lot" better as a player. That would be extraordinary for a man who last season made one of the biggest instant impacts in American sports history, but also necessary if the Rockets are to have any prospect of reaching the playoffs.

"I've played 50 career games probably, something like that," Lin said on Monday. "For me it is just the beginning. I'm very young in terms of learning. Every day I make a lot of mistakes in practice. As I cut down on those and hopefully grow my game I'll be able to evolve."

As Houston Rockets players and staff lauded Lin, the New York Knicks held their own media day and did their best to say as little as possible about him.

"Basically, it comes down to the fact that Houston made a commitment to him that we weren't prepared to make," Knicks general manager Glen Grunwald said in the team's first public comments about Lin's departure.

The Knicks decided the sums did not add up. The equation was something like this: cost plus celebrity, divided by talent. Their rejection was logical but unconventional: shouldn't a starlet graduate from Houston to Manhattan, not vice versa? From a smaller franchise to a bigger one? Kings of New York are not meant to abdicate and move to Texas.

After the purple patch, the gray areas. Lin is a marquee player who is both established and an unknown quantity, because part of his fame springs from his inexperience: a story fit for the Twitter era of sudden trends about how someone so obscure could become so good, so quickly. He was a phenomenon within a week of his first NBA start. Impossible yet to discount the possibility that a fall will be as swift as the rise, that the substance will not keep pace with the celebrity. Being average would be a disappointment.

Linsanity. Photograph: Mike Cassese/Reuters

Fuelled by points and puns, the "Linsanity" era began on February 4 when he accrued 25 points and seven assists for the Knicks against the New Jersey Nets. His first career start came two days later: 28 points, 8 assists. On February 10, Lin scored 38 points against the Los Angeles Lakers, outduelling Kobe Bryant.

A knee injury ended his season in March, shortly before Time Magazine named him as one of the hundred most influential people in the world. Lin averaged 14.6 points and 6.1 assists over 35 appearances. But his performances declined badly in his last few games and his rate of 3.6 turnovers per contest is a worry.

The $25m outlay has brought buzz to an overlooked, unglamorous and lately unsuccessful club. Houston last made the playoffs in 2009. Born in Los Angeles to Taiwanese parents, Lin's arrival will reinforce the popularity of the Rockets in Asia after the 2011 retirement of their Chinese eight-time All-Star, Yao Ming. As if symbolically, a restaurant in downtown named after Yao closed its doors last week.

There is local sponsorship potential since Houston itself is far more diverse than its cowboys and oilfields image implies: nearly eight per cent of the four million people who live in the Houston region are Asian. And there are lots of empty seats to fill in Toyota Center: last season the Rockets ranked 22nd out of 30 NBA teams in average attendance.

About 40 journalists, a quarter of them Asian, quizzed Harvard-graduate Lin on Monday in a television studio at the headquarters of Comcast SportsNet Houston, a regional network that launched the same night. It will broadcast Rockets games and the club has a near-31 per cent stake in the venture: a good moment to sign one of the world's most famous sportsmen, then.

After their media duties, the Rockets flew to a training camp in the relative obscurity of McAllen, a border town in the Rio Grande Valley. Their first regular-season game of 2012-13 is away to the Detroit Pistons on October 31.

Lin is reluctant to describe himself as the face of the franchise, though whoever produces the Rockets' marketing material naturally thinks otherwise. "Some of the guys, more experienced, older guys, I'm going to look up to them," Lin said. "I had a lot of fun last year and I'm having a lot of fun right now. It's definitely a different feel. We're all new to this thing and we're all in it together. It's a new challenge."

The irony of "Linsanity" is Lin's sanity: that the guy in the middle of the madness remains utterly, defiantly, improbably rational. When he moved back to Houston he slept on the couch of a new team-mate, Chandler Parsons, for a couple of nights. "He's just an unbelievable person. Everything he got last year, he never asked for. He's so humble," Parsons said.

"I'm a pretty lighthearted person," Lin said. "I don't really read or look at too much stuff that's written about me. If I read too much good stuff it might take away my edge. I might get a little complacent." As for how fellow players might view him: "I'm going to play this game whether there's a target on my back or not. I don't feel [any] resentment, it doesn't change my approach."

Longer gaps between games compared with last year's condensed campaign should slow any bandwagons. And Texas might be the antidote to Lin fever. He said he wants to play "blue-collar" basketball: tough and hard-working. The ethos should fit well in Houston, a practical place which will care more about how good he is at sinking three-pointers than whether he is a media construct acting as a touchstone for analysis of Asian-American race relations and the nature of modern celebrity.

Houston does not do frenzies, or circuses. The weather's too darn hot to get worked up about 'most anything. Basketball is at best the fourth-favorite sport, after NFL football, college football and high school football.

Lin could score 40 points in a game this season and a Houston Texans player breaking a fingernail would still command more attention. This city wants winners, and the Texans have started the season 4-0.

The most likely time for undivided focus on the Rockets is the spring, when football is over, the NBA is climaxing and the locals will want something to avert their gaze from the abysmal Houston Astros baseball team. But it would be bold to predict that such a young and mediocre-looking side as the Rockets will still be in post-season contention, no matter how great Lin's contribution.

All in all, Houston might be an ideal environment for Lin: as near to normal as he could hope to find. Of course, Lin proving to be normal is exactly what the Rockets are afraid of. Who pays $25m for sensible and solid?